THE LAST NOTICE COMES FOR TIME CARD 80421

By IVER PETERSON, Special to the New York Times

Published: March 6, 1982

RIVER ROUGE, Mich., March 5—
Tubby Clinton left his steel-toed boots in the kitchen, padded over to the front room and handed his wife the little slip of paper.

''Here it is,'' he said. ''Here's the big one.'' Mrs. Clinton read the paper. It said ''Notice of Layoff'' and informed Donald C. Clinton, time-card No. 80421, that he would be laid off at the end of his shift today, March 5, 1982. Signed L.W. Alley for Whitehead & Kales Company.

Judy Clinton began smoothing the paper, pressing its creases under her fingers, softening its folds, as if it were precious. Then she began to cry.

''They didn't even have the nerve to put 'termination' on it,'' Mr. Clinton said, breaking the silence. ''That'll come later, in a letter.'' 44, Jobless, No Prospects

And so, as of 3:30 today, Mr. Clinton, who is Don to his wife, Tubby to the men he works with, was out of a job and had no prospects for a new one for the first time in over 25 years - for the first time since he was 18 years old, in fact, and fresh out of Roosevelt High School.

At 44 years of age and after half a life as a steelworker, he joined the rising number of manufacturing workers idled by the recession that has closed his company, among others, and by an economy that is shifting into new fields.

According to the unemployment figures released by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics today, manufacturing unemployment reached 10.6 percent of the work force in February. This meant that 2.4 million men and women who worked in steel and cars and rubber and all of the old, basic industries were out of work and looking for new jobs.

A year ago, the rate was 8.5 percent of the manufacturing work force, and the increase since then qualifies this group as among the hardest hit in the current slump.

In Michigan, whose economy is staggering under an unemployment rate of 16.1 percent, the nation's highest, the end of Whitehead & Kales is another blow from the declining automobile industry.

The company, founded before the turn of the century, made threedecker railroad car haulers, known as auto racks, that are attached to flatbed cars. As car sales declined and more and more automobile manufacturing moved out of this area of its birth, the company declined.

From 1,800 employees 12 years ago, it shrank to its current level of 240 blue-collar jobs. Five years ago the descendants of the Whiteheads and the Kaleses sold out; last month, when a final effort for a 52-car contract fell through, the company was sold again, this time to a liquidator.

''We had so many members on layoff hoping to get back,'' said Clayton Nedd, the president of Local 2341, United Steelworkers of America. ''It's pretty sad. Some of them are drawing unemployment benefits. Many others have exhausted theirs. Some are on social services aid and many, many are hurting desperately.'' Another, 25: 'I Cried, I Cried'

Mike Swiecki had followed the blue-collar tradition, starting out at 18 at Whitehead's, as the place is known, to support his wife and two children while keeping his country and western band on the dream road to success. The layoff notice Wednesday shook him deeply.

''I'm 25 1/2 years old, and I felt bad,'' he said around the corner from High Street at the Brown Derby, a dark cave of a bar. ''I cried, I cried. I never thought it would be over - you never think it will be over.''

Mr. Clinton felt sorry for Mr. Swiecki because the younger man was just starting out in a workingman's life and had picked a hard time to do it. But Mr. Swiecki, in turn, felt sorry for the veterans like Mr. Clinton, and the reason was their pensions.

''A pension is what you work for,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''That's why I went to Whitehead's. If my father can work there for 48 years like he did, I felt it was a well-established firm that was going to be there when it came time for me to retire.'' Glimmering of a 30-Year Dream

In the life of an unionized industrial worker, he said, a pension worth upwards of $500 a month is the promise at the end of 30 years of loyal service. By then a worker is still in the late 40's, the house is mostly paid for, the children grown, and he can go out to find another, easier job to supplement the pension.

The men who streamed out of the time-clock booths at the end of the day today were all close to that hoped-for moment. Most of the younger men had been laid off earlier. But unless the older men have 30 years or better with the company this Friday, their pensions will not be paid until they reach 65.

''Twenty-eight years and 10 months to the day,'' said Billy K. Payne, a fitter-cutter-welder with a bushy grey beard and a fine head of skin. ''Now I'm 47, and I could've retired in 14 months if they'd of lasted, but now I got to wait 17 more years before I see that pension. And you go out looking for work at my age, you don't start at the bottom and keep up with those young kids.''

For a while, the blow to these men will be softened by 39 weeks of unemployment benefits, paid out at the top $197 a week rate that their $20,000-a-year jobs entitle them to. He Could Always Find a Job

Besides, said Mr. Clinton, a cheerful pipe smoker with black, unclouded hair, he has always been lucky, always been able to find a job during a temporary layoff or one of the strikes that interrupted the job. ''It'll be tight, but we'll be all right,'' he said, reassuring his wife. ''We'll get by.''

The specter of joblessness, the end of all those retirement plans, presses harder on Mrs. Clinton. Her sister Dorothy, she said, lost her job at Federal Mogul, an aircraft industry-related concern, after 25 years of working her way up to inspector, when the plant moved south and reopened without a union.

Past the age of 40, her sister had to start over again at a hated job on the assembly line at Hydramatic, a General Motors transmission plant, ''where you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom,'' Mrs. Clinton added, and after a while, that job closed, too.